Brenna Yovanoff

Agent Appreciation

2009-12-11T17:43:27Z

Over at the 10_ers, kodykeplinger (The DUFF, Fall '10) came up with a great idea: Unofficial Agent Day.

For those who don't know (mostly because I've been very remiss in actually talking about how I acquired an agent), I'm represented by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse. And let me just say, I am a weird, flighty girl in need of some fierce grounding, and she is a perfect fit.

Before she became an agent, Sarah was the publishing director of Macmillan Children's UK. Meaning that in addition to having an unparalleled knowledge of the business, she's what's known as an editorial agent. And also British. Sometimes when she calls, I like to pretend that I'm talking to Adelle DeWitt from the television show Dollhouse. Yes, I really am that nerdy.

There are so many things that I love about Sarah—she's competitive, focused, but she's also compassionate. And patient. She took me on in September of 2008 and my book didn't even go out on submission until May of 2009, because one condition of representation was a pretty big revision. When I said she was an editorial agent, I actually meant genius.

I realize now that I never did get around to talking about The Call, so here is an abbreviated account:

I'd been making a sort of general effort to be more methodical, so when my YA manuscript was ready for submission (or so I thought), I sent out an initial round of eight well-researched queries. Right away, I started getting requests for partials and fulls, which only served to further my conviction that the book was ready.

Then Sarah called me out of the blue one day, just as I was about to leave for the airport, and told me that she'd finished the manuscript and wanted to talk about it. After behaving like an inarticulate loon, I got it together—mostly—and we talked about the book. We talked about everything that needed work and everything that was poorly-developed and confusing, and by the end of the call it was clear that what I'd written needed a lot of work and the only solution was to do a comprehensive revision.

Then, I put my suitcase in the car, got on a plane, and went to a wedding.

A few days later, I got another offer of representation from an agent I'd been coveting for a long time. The second agent was very enthusiastic about the manuscript and only suggested a few minor changes, after which, it would be all set to go out on submission. But all the things Sarah had talked about had taken root in my head, and the previously-ready manuscript didn't seem so ready anymore.

At that point, there were still several agents reading. In an uncharacteristic display of resolve, I sat down and pulled the manuscript from consideration. Because I knew right then, unequivocally (and those who know me will appreciate how exceedingly rare that is), that I wanted Sarah to be my agent.

Were there times during the Big Revision that I was tempted to yank my hair out? Yes. Did I drink more coffee than is decently good for anybody? Again, yes. Did I ever, at any point, kick myself and wish I'd gone with someone demanding less work? No, I did not. Because the entire time I was drinking coffee and despairing, I never doubted that Sarah was absolutely right about everything.

She helped me overhaul my book, then shepherded me through the whirlwind of an auction that was a direct result of her hard work as an agent, but also as an editor. She assuages my fears, answers my questions, and always keeps me informed about what's going on.

Sarah Davies is my agent, and she is absolutely wonderful.

Author Photos (I have them)

2009-12-09T17:08:18Z

For most of my life—no, really—most of my life:

Little Sister Yovanoff has been taking pictures of me.

So, when I needed a professional author-type photo, I bribed her with lunch at the tea shop and we took a bunch of head shots.

I sent a few to Razorbill, and it's generally accepted that this will be the one we use for the book jacket, which makes me happy, because it's my absolute favorite:

But just for fun and because apparently, I feel this post isn't quite image-heavy enough yet, here are a few more that we liked, but which didn't make the final cut:

See me looking all author-y and not like I'm about to start laughing uncontrollably? Like I did between every single frame? That's the magic of photography.

Captured on Film

2009-11-30T19:39:40Z

If you're in the mood to see me fidget and wiggle and make baffling faces, you should head over here to the Greenhouse site. There's a little video of me reading from THE REPLACEMENT, along with an interview.

I'm BACK

2009-11-13T19:58:04Z

New York was absolutely excellent, and also full of shoes. It was the first time I'd ever gone by myself, so I felt particularly sophisticated and adventuresome.

I stayed at a Very Art Deco Hotel by Washington Square and successfully kept various appointments, saw two of my cousins, and got myself taxis.

On Tuesday, I went to Penguin, where I met my agent, the inimitable Sarah Davies, before going up to the Razorbill offices and encountering a whole contingent of marketing and publicity people. I simply can't do justice to their patience or their friendliness (I was pretty discombobulated by the whole situation). They were all warm and articulate, and I think I mostly sounded like, um . . .

Then we had a meeting, where lots of timelines and other practicalities were discussed, and I got approval for Book Two (yay!). However, my hands-down favorite part was when Ben Schrank, the Razorbill publisher, drew cover concepts for THE REPLACEMENT on the whiteboard. I can't talk about any of the drawings. I mean, there's not even an official motif to be top-secret about yet. But the experience was extremely exhilarating, and I'm so excited to see how it will turn out!

I had lunch with Sarah and my editor, Lexa, who is fantastic in too many ways to count, but particularly because when I was revising THE REPLACEMENT, she kept encouraging me to add more—more kissing, more angsting, more doom and disaster and redemption, and something on fire. And also because she has promised to send me an ARC of Angela Morrison's second novel Sing Me to Sleep! (I was quietly enthralled by Taken by Storm.)

The next morning, I breakfasted with Sarah, and met Allison the Foreign Rights Agent, who is both adorable and highly knowledgeable. She lives in New York and told me lots of nice places to shop, which helped later when I went wandering around SoHo. It was like a scavenger hunt—I meandered back and forth, referring to the list of addresses Allison had given me, feeling an excessive degree of triumph each time I located one, and occasionally stopping to wrap my blisters with strips of kleenex, which is an age-old soccer trick.

Then I bought some shoes, hailed a taxi by waving my arm and looking very assertive, caught my plane, and now . . . I'm home.

Yay for New York!

2009-11-08T17:12:23Z

I'm going there tomorrow (!)

I'm going to meet my agent and my editor for the first time, and visit the Penguin offices, and also probably be forced to overcome my phobia of hailing cabs, unless I can coerce the desk attendant at my hotel to do it for me.

Maybe I can walk everywhere. I do have a map . . .

Pretty Cynical

2009-10-21T20:58:06Z

Disclaimer: this is still a hard subject for me to talk about, which makes me feel stupid. I hate admitting that I'm easily influenced by completely artificial constructs, most of which probably have something to do with the media. Also, I'm totally old enough to know better. And guys out there? I guarantee some of this won't even make sense.

At 15, I found social concerns far more captivating than, say, Algebra. There were the usual distractions—what to wear, who to sit with, how to start a conversation. However, all these things paled next to that ravening concern that blindsides so many teenage girls. Being Pretty.

I observed early on that being pretty was a tricky situation, a balancing act that called for absolute precision, and the footholds weren't always obvious. After a good deal of thought, I developed a theory. It was good to be pretty—but not too pretty. It was good to be not-ugly. It was bad if the boys liked you more than they liked other girls, because then the other girls might hate you.

I myself was not a hater of pretty girls. They kind of scared me, but in a mesmerizing way, like poisonous flowers and solar eclipses are sometimes scary. More over, I felt sorry for the girls who drifted too far toward the stunning end of the spectrum and so, had to be punished for it. This is most apparent in the case of Rosie—to this day, one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen in real life, and in 10th grade, virtually friendless:

Angela says she’s jealous of Rosie, because all the boys like Rosie because Rosie is beautiful and friendly and knows how to make people pay attention to her. I’m not jealous of Rosie. I mean, I am. But I wouldn’t want to be like her.

And even Angela began to notice, after a few weeks, how Rosie eats lunch at a table by herself, walks through the halls alone, has no real friends. Sharky’s her friend when we’re all in PE, but outside of class he barely glances at her.

All those guys who flirt with her, they’ve got other friends, real friends, and once the bell rings, she doesn’t exist anymore.

Pretty much everything about this troubled me, but the most troubling part was my own failure to befriend Rosie. I wanted to ask her to eat lunch with us. I wanted—badly, even—to talk to Angela about the Whole Rosie Predicament, but I didn't know what to say.

The beauty conversation was one you were only allowed to have if you were tearing yourself down. I knew I didn't want to get into that, so it was easier to avoid it. Subsequently, I kept quiet about Rosie. I refused to admit that I ever even thought about clothing or makeup or boys. Those things were “shallow,” and also, if you admitted to anyone—even in private, even in a whisper—that you might possibly be pretty, you were clearly stuck-up and full of yourself.

Then, boys started liking me—not all the time, but enough to make things uncomfortable. I did the only sensible thing. I freaked out, went to Target, and bought a terrible hat,* which I used to hide my hair and a good portion of my face. Couple this with well-cultivated silence and a staunch refusal to make eye contact, and you have the formula for invisibility. It helped. Sort of.

This next excerpt is from the Hat Era and is as close as I came that year to discussing any of my attending beauty-panic. Also, it's pretty representative of my 15-year-old propensity to leap from topic to topic in the style of a flying squirrel.

My mom said that she’s going to buy me an alarm clock. She told me the other day that I was like the Snow Queen, cold and untouchable. That boys might be frightened of my tiny wrists, how smooth my skin is. Sometimes she says these things like they come out of nowhere.

But I can only see it the other way, like I am Jane (It doesn’t matter which one. They are always the girl-next-door). When I was little, I had a book about Plain Jane. Her bangs hanging down in her eyes, she said, “I wish he loved me.” And the fairy-godmother’s hobby was making wishes come true. I haven’t got a fairy-godmother and the boys around here smoke too much pot.

I want to point out that none of this is precisely true (except, my mom really said that, and I had the book with the fairy-godmother, and the part about the boys smoking pot—that was true). I wasn't plain, I wasn't Jane, and I wasn't the girl next-door. I was pretty, which is scary to say even now. Also, I lived halfway up the side of a rather treacherous mountain and was no one's next-door neighbor.

More importantly, the whole time I was writing it, I didn't really believe it. But even in the privacy of my own journal, I had to go for the tear-down. I couldn't talk about what it meant for boys to like me, because I might be punished. I couldn't talk about how it felt, because that would mean admitting that boys might possibly (sometimes? a little?) find me attractive.

It was two more years before I could think critically about the hazards of beauty without feeling like I was doing something wrong, because part of the beauty game is that you never acknowledge you're playing it. Even now, I want to reduce it, just throw up my hands and say “Yeah, fifteen was a really weird age.” But that's not adequate. The game was a kind of survival exercise, and I was always amazed that we played it right in front of boys, parents, teachers, without them even noticing.

I can look at it now and say (emphatically, if not objectively) that it was a bad game. Although the rules were nonsensical, the message was clear: Beautiful was what you were supposed to want, and it was also the worst thing you could be.

*Exhibit A: Hat I wore for roughly eight months, in order to diminish attractiveness and prevent scrutiny. Also, photographic evidence that I look exactly like my father.

Courtesy of the motion picture (500) Days of Summer

2009-10-18T19:49:08Z

This is kind of my favorite thing today:

Tessa . . .

2009-10-08T17:32:10Z

. . . finally gets to tell her secret!

Okay, this has been driving me crazy, because it's the kind of thing you just desperately want to tell everyone already! (Which I realize does not remotely compare to what it's been like for Tess.) But now she can tell everyone, because the deal was officially posted this morning!

The resident merry_fates blood-bunny signed an awesome two-book deal with Random House Children's, the first book is slated for 2011, and will, of course, deliver blood.

Flailing in Briefly to Say . . .

2009-10-06T22:05:02Z

. . . line edits are almost done, and I have a new title!

My book, coming next fall from Razorbill, is now quite aptly called THE REPLACEMENT, and here is the summary:

Mackie Doyle seems like everyone else in the perfect little town of Gentry, but he is living with a fatal secret - he is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now the creatures under the hill want him back, and Mackie must decide where he really belongs and what he really wants.

Also, it is a love story. Just so you know.

Teachers as Villains, Part 1

2009-09-25T17:01:15Z

Okay, this is a set-up I generally try to stay away from. A lot of times it seems like an easy out, and when I write, I feel this mysterious obligation to portray all my characters as evenhandedly as possible. I tend not to like the set-up in published fiction for the same reasons, the big exception being Frank Portman's King Dork, because I swear Tom Henderson has the male version of my 10th grade English teacher—weird pronunciations, copious busy-work, and all. What I'm saying is, my real life experience was distinctly lacking in evenhandedness.

I don't know if this is completely normal, but in tenth grade, I had a spate of really questionable teachers. Later, I went on to have wonderful teachers, but they were younger, took themselves less seriously, and mostly taught the college-prep courses. The unpleasant ones taught general requirements, which could definitely account for their somewhat tyrannical attitudes.

Looking back, I'm much more able to understand what drove them to be angry and jaded, but I still don't condone it, mostly because they were supposed to be the responsible ones. Their jobs were to mentor, to educate us, and I think it doesn't matter how rude a fifteen-year-old is, you should never try willfully to hurt them.

In this excerpt, I am almost 16. I've only been in school for about a month and already the English teacher, M, is shaping up to be my secret nemesis. Lucas sits directly in front of me. He's popular and kind of a party boy, but generally articulate, generally kind. When the mood strikes him, he has the decency to notice I exist, and the decency to let me be invisible the rest of the time.

We're reading Anne Frank in English class. Not The Diary of, but the play. We were talking about the Holocaust and Lucas asked how come no one did anything. I wanted to say that people did do things, but most of the time, it had to be small and dangerous and in secret.
     Lucas is so idealistic and so good. I couldn't see his face, but the back of his neck looked angry. He said, “Well, I wouldn't have just stood around and done nothing!"
     M said, “You don't know what you would have done.”
     “Yes,” he said. “I do.”
     “You might feel conflicted, but you wouldn't sacrifice your own safety or your family. You would serve the state.”
     Lucas stood up. “I would rather be dead.”
     “You don't mean that,” she said. But the idea that someone else, someone who doesn't even know you, can tell you what you mean is so absurd.
     Lucas was holding his breath, looking down like he was counting to ten. Then he looked up again and said, “I would rather be dead than kill somebody who never did anything to me, just because their hair's a different color or they go to a different church.”
     “You have no basis to say that. How can you presume to know what you'd do in a situation you've never experienced?”
     “Why do you think that every person anywhere would rather kill a whole bunch of other people than be dead? If I had to kill someone, a stranger, I wouldn't be able to live with that. So let them shoot me for not following orders. I'd probably kill myself anyway.”
     “Lucas, that is a very inappropriate thing to say.”
     The change in him happened so fast. His shoulders got hard and his jaw stood out. “Inappropriate? I'll tell you what's [$%&*ing] inappropriate—telling people they'd be [$%&*ing] murderers because someone told them to! That's inappropriate!”
     “Go out in the hall and stay there until you can contain yourself.”
     Lucas went out in the hall and paced back and forth. I could see him through the little window beside the door. M stuck to the lesson like nothing had happened, but I was pretty sure that something had.
     I could tell she was upset. Instead of waiting for volunteers, she started calling on people to read, but only the people who are shy or functionally illiterate. She made TS read Mrs. Frank, because she knows TS has a hard time reading out loud.
     Because Lucas wasn't in his seat, she could see me, so she called on me to read Margot.
     We had to stand at the front of the room, so I looked at the floor and tried to hide behind TS. It's weird to be shy or nervous. I know I shouldn't be. I'm good at reading aloud. I'm not ridiculous, no one will laugh at me. There isn't a consequence. And it's stupid to be self-conscious about reading someone else's words, when Lucas cares so much about stuff that he'll stand up in class, say whatever, like no one else's opinion of him even matters.
     It turned out to be a moot point, though. In the scene she'd picked for us to read, Margot doesn't have any lines.

I don't have a lot to say about this. Even now, it gives me feel a slightly surreal feeling. It makes me nostalgic for Lucas, because he had conviction and compassion—far more than most of the boys I met that year, and more than some people ever have. And it makes me feel bad for M that she couldn't see or appreciate that.

I remember things about the day that I didn't write down, what she looked like and how she seemed. She kept drawing herself up, sticking out her chin, like the most important thing was putting Lucas in his place. It was so lacking in logic, like all that mattered was winning, which is really the worst part, because it was never a contest.

Innocent Bystanding

2009-09-23T17:21:01Z

Well, I've been MIA for a while due to my second round of revisions, but I'm back! At some point, I may even get around to talking about revision and structure and what it means to sit down and really take stock of your story, but right now, I'm in the mood to talk about high school. Specifically, I'm in the mood to talk about that ever-popular literary cliché, The First Day.

Unfortunately, I have no cohesive written account of this event. It's kind of too bad, because I'd really love to know what my fifteen-year-old self would have said about it.

Suffice it to say, there was an incident, and that incident clearly made an impression, because I continued to mention it in my journal for the rest of the year. But at the exact moment that it happened, I was far too mortified to write it down.

On the first day of school, I had to stand in line in the counseling office to pick up my class schedule.

I was on a natural-selection kick (yes, you can have those) and had assembled what can only be termed a scientifically-informed outfit.

It went like:

Plain navy blue T-shirt, not quite fitted, but not too big. Cut-off denim shorts. Turf shoes, which were the only sneakers I owned that didn't have cleats attached to the bottom. To prevent my hair from attracting attention, I braided it into a ballet bun—dainty, demure, conservative. Totally inoffensive. This is the apparel-based definition of protective coloration.

None of my efforts mattered, as you will see in a moment.

For the sake of this narrative—my stats:

Height: short
Width: twig
Depth: impenetrable
Volume: mute

So, the story. There's this girl (me) standing in the scheduling line, not bothering anyone. She has on this completely terrible Wal-Mart wristwatch. It's ugly the way a codfish or a potato is ugly, by which I mean, it is so ugly that it's not even ironic-ugly. It is black polyvinyl, she hates it, it is water resistant to 20 feet.

There's this boy (douchebag)* standing in line just behind her. I say boy, because looking back, I realize that no matter how I viewed him at the time, he was young—eighteen, nineteen. But from the perspective of the girl, who is fifteen and completely unused to institutionalized learning, he is the very picture of authority. He's terrifyingly adult-looking, with capped teeth and weight-room muscles. He has a stupid little festival of facial hair. He has a neck tattoo, okay? He is not a boy.

He's visibly bored, clearly at the top of the social food chain. He takes pleasure in the fact that there are very few obstacles to prevent him from doing whatever he wants. She notes this, because she is nothing if not observant. Her observation is reinforced a minute later when he reaches out and takes hold of the her wrist.

Remember folks, she hates this watch. But that is not the reason she doesn't stop him. The reason is mysterious. The reason is that the situation is just too bizarre, and no stranger has ever taken the liberty of touching her without permission.

The buckle is a cheap one. It sticks and he has to work at it. She doesn't look at him. She stands placidly, patiently, while he undoes the buckle and removes the watch from her wrist.

Anyone shaking their heads in disbelief yet? Because I am. I was there, and I'm still marginally scandalized by my behavior.

I did look back at him. Once. It didn't prove to be a very effective defense tactic. I don't know what he saw, because he smiled—this wide, carnivorous smile—and then I just looked at the floor. I was mortified. I was mystified and petrified, and still, I couldn't stop thinking that this was by far one of the most interesting things that had ever happened to me in my entire life.

I went to my first class, which was Geometry. My errant watch-thief was there. His seat was directly across the aisle from mine. Until he got dropped from the class a month later, he would periodically lean over and hold up his wrist so I could read the time.

We never spoke. Occasionally, I wrote flippant, angry things about him in reference to other events (and once, in reference to William Golding's The Lord of the Flies), but only because I didn't want to admit that I was actually angry with myself.

I recognized that I had set a precedent of inactivity. But at fifteen, I was content to accept that, if it meant avoiding conflict. My greatest horror was Making a Scene. Occasionally I wondered what would have happened if I'd objected—just snatched my wrist back and told him to go to hell—but not with any real curiosity.

I didn't think much about things like personal integrity or establishing reasonable boundaries. Hey, at that point, I hadn't even figured out that the person I was actually mad at was myself.

After giving the matter a great deal of insufficient thought, I concluded the only thing that would be different if I'd protested was that I would still have my watch.**

*Can I say douchebag? I think I can—they say it on network TV. Okay, I'm leaving it in.
**Several weeks later, my mom asked me what had happened to the watch. Always the literalist, I told her that I'd lost it.

BALLAD CONTEST (you know you want to)

2009-09-22T16:42:24Z

Chances are, you've seen this. Tess, Maggie, and I have a lot of overlap in our f-listers and I am chronically late to everything lj-related. So, I'm not going to re-post the whole thing, since you've probably already seen it, but I will provide a general rundown, plus important links.

Maggie's new novel Ballad is coming out. If you spot it in the wild and take pictures, you'll have the chance to win fabulous prizes. Maggie does a better job of explaining, using visual aids. Plus, she tells you how to actually, you know, enter.

Prizes (this is where it gets fabulous): The grand prize is a one-chapter/15-page critique by all three merry_fates. Second prize is books, and everyone likes books, right? Right? Also, a slick merry_fates messenger bag. Third prize is a signed audiobook of SHIVER.

If someone goes well above and beyond the contest requirements, we may just have to work out a fourth prize. So, get those cameras out and start stalking!

Cool Contest

2009-08-22T20:44:27Z

Hey all,

While I'm not an official entrant, Jackie, AKA fabulousfrock has a really
cool contest going on, so if you'd like to win an ARC of her upcoming debut Magic Under Glass, personalized with adorable illustrations, you should head over and check it out!

On Voyeurism. Sort of.

2009-08-21T23:23:05Z

I've been thinking about this journal. I know, I know—you can't tell by looking at it. I am a very bad journal-keeper.

But here's the thing: I wasn't always.

There was a time in my life when I recorded my thoughts and observations with an enthusiasm bordering on obsessive. It sustained me. It kept me from melting into a puddle of boredom during high school.

I can't be sure that other people like journal entries and scrapbooks the same way I do, because I also like liverwurst and that Swedish salt licorice that's shaped to look like little fish, so this is going to be kind of an experiment. megancrewe has been talking about adolescence, posting journal excerpts that chronicle various revealing moments. In a certain sense, you could say that I'm copying Megan Crewe. And you would be right.

So, here goes. The Alice in this early observation is excruciatingly shy, which may explain why she is so fascinating to Sophomore Brenna. She wears glasses and is a year or two older than me, putting her at about 17. She wears combat boots and plays the cello. Although she mostly seems to go unremarked, Sophomore Brenna finds her utterly remarkable and admires her in the way that younger girls admire older ones. Although you can't tell it from her somewhat impressionistic description, Sophomore Brenna spends most bus-rides wishing that she looked just like Alice.

No girls ride the bus except me, and sometimes Alice. But Alice keeps to herself and doesn’t say much. She is kind of pretty, with short auburn hair and gray eyes. She reminds me a little of a rabbit. The kind of rabbit that doesn’t say much. When someone asks her a question, she sighs, like the answer weighs a lot. Like so much that she almost can't breathe.

She sits with her cheek against the window and her knees pulled up to her chest, tugging on the laces of her boots. Her slip is always uneven, hanging down past her skirt, and her stockings always have runs. I make up stories about her. About how she dreams of symphonies, of pirate ships or stars, like she's always someplace else.

Alice escapes by staring out the window, but I don’t have to. It’s strange to know you mostly don’t exist. I’m not even a real wallflower, but more like the shadow of one. Sometimes people in my classes make comments about how I’m a space cadet, or “not all there,” and maybe that’s the same thing I’m doing when I pretend that Alice has gotten away. Maybe it’s the equivalent of calling her a space cadet, when really she’s just like me.

I could say a lot about this—things about empathy and self-perception and projection, but I'm mostly just astonished to realize that I probably could have been friends with her if I'd been more outgoing or hadn't been in such peculiar awe of her.

At the time though, I felt her solitude was necessary to her character. Even though I prided myself on my objectivity, I still had a tendency to view everyone through my own lens. I saw people in terms of narrative rather than real life. It occurred to me that Alice was lonely, but not that I had any possible influence over her loneliness. I was fundamentally separate. Even sitting across the aisle from her, I had no involvement in the situation. The idea that I might one day start a conversation with her was flatly implausible.

This makes me regretful now, mostly because I think I would have liked her. In some ways though, it was simply a necessary part of my socialization, one more thing to grow out of. Because as weird as it may sound, at 15, if I didn't know someone, they were mostly just a story I happened to be telling.

Away Message

2009-08-16T00:21:13Z

Just a note to say we're doing the Oklahoma/Kansas thing again, so I'll have absolutely no internet and very little phone reception until Wednesday night.

Tessa's being good enough to post my merry_fates fic for me, but I won't be able to respond to comments until I get back.

I'm hoping to get some good photos out of this--possibly even some author-type photos, since Little Sister Yovanoff is bringing her camera with all the fancy parts, so I'll be posting pics when I get back.

See you all next week!

Something Publication-Related

2009-08-14T23:33:44Z

First foreign rights!

My book (which is currently between titles) is coming out from Razorbill next fall, and now it's also going to be published simultaneously by Simon & Schuster UK!

This means I will be on two continents. Which is indescribably novel to me!

My book is going to be British.

Go! Now! Congratulate!

2009-08-06T00:49:33Z

This book--m_stiefvater's beautiful, luscious book--has debuted at #9 on the NYT Bestseller list! Go forth and tell Maggie that she rocks!

Why YA?

2009-07-27T23:37:04Z

This is a tricky question. It's not exactly rhetorical, but it's also not one of those ones that requires a definitive answer. It's not like “Can I put away this cordless drill?” or, “Do you need anything from the store?”

People are allowed to write what interests them. That's the cool thing about writing—you get to tell the stories that matter to you. People ask why I write about high school and I'm inclined to say that it's because I am allowed to. Which is a complete cop-out.

So, honesty time: I write YA because high school was one of the most interesting things that has ever happened to me in my whole entire life. Ever.

This is mostly because it was the first time I had attended—you know—school, and when you spend the majority of your time alone in your room with your extensive collection of spiral-bound notebooks, or else playing Blackjack with your sister, you never have to practice skills like plotting the quickest route to your locker or peacefully coexisting with 2,500 total strangers.

On the first day, a boy asked me which junior high I'd gone to and I told him, very indistinctly (I'd previously had near-perfect diction, but the social rigors of school immediately transformed me into a mumbler) that I had been homeschooled by hippies.

He looked at me for a long, long time. Then he squinted and said, “Wait—did you just say you were raised by gypsies?”

I shrugged. I lifted my hands and let them flop back down. “Sure. Yeah, that.”

Because at a certain point, there is not really a quantifiable difference.

I realized at once that being homeschooled by hippies (alternately, gypsies) was not very normal. In an attempt to isolate the elements of Normal—not an attempt to necessarily be normal, but just to have a clear understanding of what it entailed—I started writing things down.

I wrote down what people did and said and wore, and how they acted when they knew people were watching them, as compared to how they acted when they thought they were alone. I developed theories on various mating rituals, and divided displays of aggression into classes and subclasses. I studied my peers with the intensity of an anthropologist. A tiny, unlicensed anthropologist who was supposed to be doing her English homework.

But that was at the beginning. After a few weeks, I stopped trying to wedge everything into a scientific schema. I was interested in people because they were interesting. They were surprising and kind of wonderful, and I wrote down anything remarkable (and many things that—looking back—were not particularly remarkable) every single day. I have never in my life paid as much attention to what was going on around me as I did between the ages of 15 and 18.

So, I guess the answer is, I write YA because I still have hundreds and hundreds of close-written pages, no respect for the margins, all of them containing something raw and startling and true to remind me what it was like. Because it's very interesting to watch who people are while they're in the process of becoming themselves. It's very real.

What about you—readers, writers, either, both—why YA?

Revision Cave

2009-07-23T20:53:58Z

The revision cave is a nice place to live. It's quiet and dark. There are no bright lights and no loud noises. Or maybe there are, but you certainly can't be counted on to notice them.

There is no such thing as laundry in the revision cave. There are no dishes to wash, no plans. The gym is a thing of the past, and so is vacuuming. News, politics, and series television grind to a halt. The world stalls.

Occasionally, there are anxiety dreams involving carnivorous rabbits that dig all the way down to the water main and flood your basement. You try to shoo them away, but they are, unfortunately, carnivorous. So you get a stick and poke at them half-heartedly. This is a metaphor for revision, even if you have no idea what it means.

In the cave, in the dark, everything is a metaphor for everything else. Sometimes, not a very good one. You consider all the ways that language feels inadequate, and then use it anyway.

Sometimes, you look around and discover with delight that there is coffee.

Editorial Revision 1.0

2009-07-08T18:34:12Z

I'm writing a funeral . . .

However, due to certain biological constraints that prevent him from actually setting foot on hallowed ground, my main character/first-person narrator is unable to attend.

I'm writing an implied funeral . . .

Revision is awesome.

Savannah . . .

2009-06-06T20:35:33Z

. . . is so much fun. So much fun! There will be a more cohesive account later, for sure. But right now, just so much fun.

And thank you *everyone* for all the responses to my big news! I've been running around like crazy the last couple days, and when I finally got a chance to get some internet and log on, it made me appallingly maudlin and sappy when I saw all the comments!

Something Exciting!

2009-06-05T03:59:07Z

Two things, actually. Two.

The first thing is that by this time tomorrow, I'll be in Savannah and it will be awesome. Not only will I have the pleasure of meeting fellow authors dawn_metcalf, everflame, carrie_ryan, m_stiefvater, fabulousfrock, ljsingleton, watchmebe, and seaheidi, but I hear there will be food there. And Spanish moss, and possibly ghosts. Also, I understand there's a beach. (For those who may not be truly familiar with the great paradox that is me, I hate water, but I love the ocean.)

The second thing is . . . I have a book deal!!!!!!

(!!!!!!!!!!!)

It's with Razorbill, an imprint I have coveted for a long time to an obscenely covetous degree, and while I'm completely unable to express myself clearly, I can still communicate by pasting the PW announcement here:

Lexa Hillyer at Razorbill acquired the debut novel FE by Brenna Yovanoff at auction during BEA. The book tells the story of Malcolm Doyle, who seems like everyone else in his perfect little town, but he has a secret: he is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby 16 years ago. Now the dark side wants him back and he must decide where he really belongs. Pub date is fall 2010. Sarah Davies of the Greenhouse Literary Agency was the agent.

That's about me!

Also, my fabulous and . . . what's another word for fabulous? My super-fabulous agent, Sarah Davies, gives an account on her blog.

So, uh. You should check it out. Yeah.

Yeah.

Hang on, I'm Telling a Story

2009-05-14T19:16:10Z

Okay, so . . . it gives me great personal satisfaction to announce that at long (long, long, long) last, I'm on submission! Like, real. Official. Submission. To publishing houses!

Which means all kinds of fun possibilities, like adequate sleep and a return to rational thought, but especially that I get to have a life again, and read books and go out with friends, and other far less glamorous things, like raking the flowers beds.

Overall, I feel that I'm taking this on-submission thing rather well. I am composed. In fact, m_stiefvater and everflame have both expressed alarm at my general tranquility (read: glacial). I started thinking about that. If I'm honest, I do tend to meet most large-scale developments with far more composure than, say, getting a flat tire or finding out that Vitaminwater has discontinued their line of energy drinks. Actually, it's pretty unreasonable.

So, in honor of my contextually inappropriate self-possession, today I'm offering up definitive proof that I can be just as histrionic as anyone else. What follows is for posterity, and most especially for Tess and Maggie.

Now, I am going to tell you the Centipede Story.

First, some background:

I spent my formative years in rural Arkansas. Arkansas is home to many things, including giant moths, biting flies, and an impressive variety of weird, phosphorescent beetles.

What I'm saying is, I've shaken my fair share of cockroaches out of my fair share of bath towels. I was not, at that time, afraid of much when it came to things with lots of legs. I was not, for instance, afraid of centipedes.

We eventually relocated to Colorado and moved into a big sprawling house that had been divided into haphazard apartments. For the purpose of this story, its two most important features were a crawl-space underneath the floor and a cheerful girl in Apartment C who came from someplace wholesome like Duluth. She hated spiders, which was really too bad, because there were a lot of spiders in the crawl-space.

One day, in a fit of shortsightedness, she crawled down under the house and set off a bug-bomb. Suffice it to say, the bugs didn't like it. In fact, they didn't like it so much that they coordinated a mass exodus and came surging up through the heating vents. For the rest of the week, we could hear our poor wholesome neighbor screaming through the walls.

But we in Apartment B were made of stronger stuff. Sister Yovanoff and I were brave and rural and shockingly scientific. Sometimes, if a particularly weird-looking bug showed up, we'd put it in a jar and study it. We were placid. Occasionally (dare I say it?), self-righteously so.

Then one day I was standing at the sink, experimenting with makeup. I should point out that I was about twelve years old when this story takes place, and I was not very good with makeup. This is only important in the sense that, for the purpose of the narrative, you have to imagine that I'm wearing a lot of eyeliner. Like, a lot.

I stepped back from the mirror to admire the effect and instead of linoleum, my foot came down on something cold, hard, prickling, and moving.

I'm not a big person, and at age twelve, my ankles were about the size of a normal person's wrists. I was what one might term slight. What I'm getting at here is, a centipede that is considered “giant” by a normal-sized person is verging on colossal when I'm twelve years old and wearing it as an anklet.

I looked down, and if you are in any way squeamish, don't click these links. When you think centipede, you might be thinking these guys, which are kind of gross, but ultimately manageable. The titan that had come up out of the heating vent wasn't manageable. It was this guy. And it was spiraling around my ankle and up my leg like the stripe on a barber poll.

For the first time in my life, I did the Bug Dance. You know the one. It involves shrieking, howling, flailing. I hopped around the bathroom on one foot in all my smoky-eyed glory, waving my arms and trying to shake that sucker off, and its little scratchy legs were going scratchy-scratchy up my calf and I am not ashamed to say that I carried on like an absolute lunatic.

It surprised me. I had not known, for instance, that I could scream like I was being murdered. I had not known that I could become irrationally phobic. Which I subsequently did. Not only of all centipedes ever (even itty-bitty tiny ones), but also of every single heating vent in the entire house. It was educational. Possibly damaging. Damagingly educational?

Looking back, there are many worst parts to this story. There's the actual centipede, of course. And the self-righteous smugness that preceded it, and my enthusiastic and tragic eye-makeup, and the bald shock of finding out that I wasn't nearly as brave as I liked to think I was, but looking back, I think the most daunting part of all was when I tried incoherently and somewhat hysterically to explain the incident to my mother, who can always be counted on to go right to the heart of things.

In typical my-mother fashion, she looked at me for a second and then said, “But honey, you've just never been afraid of bugs.”

I responded with a piteous cry, a positive wail: “But now I am!”

Prizes, Rogue Ebay-ers and Angsty Werewolf Love

2009-05-08T17:58:27Z

Let me explain. No, it's too complicated. Let me sum up.

There's a contest regarding this beautiful, soulful, and as-yet unreleased book by Maggie Stiefvater, which is currently available for pre-order .

I am not actually an entrant in the contest, so don't think you have to show up and say my name—you just have to get your friends to show up and say yours.

Go here and let Maggie explain.

Unrepentant Rewrite Stats Ahead:

2009-02-26T07:59:54Z

Feel free to disregard—I'm on a sleep-dep-fueled ramble of epic proportions* and I can't promise entertainment value or even marginal coherency.

Okay, so I've always been a slash-and-burn reviser, but since December, when this particular rewrite commenced in earnest . . . well, let me just say that in the past three months, I've axed like I've never axed before.

At this point, I estimate that there are fewer than fifteen thousand original words remaining from what was once a 70k manuscript and is now a different 70k manuscript. I have pulled my hair, and stopped brushing my hair, and gone running a lot, and once I cried when I heard a Jimmy Eat World song on the radio. On these grounds, I could probably be institutionalized.

I have deleted scenes I hated, and scenes that I liked, and even one that I loved, but this is okay, because the book that existed before was sloppy and pedestrian. This new book will be much better. It has to be. It owes me.

Number One Triumph: Since Valentine's Day, I have written twenty (say it with me, people) TWENTY THOUSAND new words. Not first-draft words, but the RIGHT words. Or at least, okay ones. This is not counting the words that I've written and subsequently deleted. There were many. This rewrite is going down. I am killing it like an expletive modified by some other expletive.

More evidence that D is awesome: I waylay him in the kitchen in order to apologize for behaving like an extraterrestrial for the past week, and then go one further, apologizing preemptively for any increasing irrationality, irritability or other weirdness that may yet occur as a result of foregoing sleep and basically all forms of real-life contact.

He says, and I quote, “So, you're saying there's going to be pie.”

Me: “Were you listening to me?”

Him: “Yeah, I heard you say that I'd be getting pie. When you stop sleeping, you bake a lot.”

I am tragically predictable. I am married to someone who totally gets me.

Lesson for life (self,write this down): Rewriting a book that you've already written is sometimes way, way harder than writing a book that is different.

*ETA: less than epic ramble. But totally ramble-y nonetheless. I do not disappoint.